Calamari in Red Wine and Tomato Sauce

Abject failure in my house! Too spicy, squid ended up rubbery... Not sure where I went wrong! Happy chickens tomorrow I think!

Took shortcuts. Thought this was very good & spicy. For a quicker version, I passed on using fresh calamari, frozen worked just fine...took less time.

This is a staple recipe around our house now. You can add an array of seafood \ shellfish to this recipe. It's all good. I always at least double it, excluding the seafood. Then I freeze it in bags. I add the meat the next time we reheat the sauce.

This was good. Anoter reviewer suggested this was easy. IT IS NOT!! Cleaning a kilo of squid takes a minimum of 45 minutes and that is if you know what you are doing. DO NOT USE FRESH SQUID LIKE I DID. It is too tender and turns mushy when cooked, not rubbery like frozen does. The sauce was tasty and I will make again. If anyone cares here is how you clean squid. First you pull all the heads off, then you cut off the tentacles off above the eyes. Discard the lower portion of the head. Turn the tentacles inside out and cut off the round bulb centre. Rinse and Drain. For the body of the squid, pull out all the back bones. Remove the black skin surface. Cut squid into round pieces. Turn each piece inside out and remove any stuff on the inside under running water, drain. Now instead of putting them in this recipe dredge in a mixture of rice flour and pepper, deep fry in hot oil just seconds (till they float, less than a minute). Drain on kitchen roll.

Fantastic! My wife loved this recipe even though I thought there was too much sauce. I cooked the calamari only about 6-8 minutes so they wouldn't get tough. There was enough sauce left over that I saved it and used it the next day to make a fantastic red clam sauce for pasta. My wife asked me again today when I am making this again...I guess it will be tomorrow.

This is so so so so good. I definitely recommend simmering the sauce longer to thicken it. I love serving this with fresh, thick crusty bread. Thanks!